Directly from the sewer at the center of this cacophony comes crawling the next number, “Our Seventh Sister (Ceremony of The Empty Space).”

It advances with a weave of rusty mandolin, banjos fingerpicked and teased out from a central processing unit. The bass squirms about the mulch of bucket drums, simulating the moist thump-thump-thump of an excited heartbeat. Architecturally compact guitars hack forward like hatchets through the foliage of factory handclaps and a thicket of battered cymbals. Sometimes they burst with succinct solos: vivid squiggles like the last of acrylic paint squeezed from a rolled up aluminum tube. They then oh-so-briefly bivouac and recoup with a strum and chime before they’re back out to their chop and hew.

With ludicrous bark and bite added to the singer’s dulcet voice, the lyrics pour and plod ahead like a mule with a syncopated beat—whip-driven through citrus peels boiled in sugar and hot ash. He sounds like a tourist demented with delight at the novelty of it all. The whole production is a buzz of gusto before the song swoons down to mud-churning violins for its farewell lines, which the listener hits as if an epitaph on a tombstone.

Followed a trail of black flags littered across the barren white.

As I entered town, searched my pockets for my zippo lighter.

.

I’ve got thirty-three leaves and forty grams of fresh tobacco;

Tips of my thumb and middle finger are stained dark yellow ochre.

.

Nicotine resin from smoke!

Or,

Smoke from nicotine resin!

.

I gave a greeting to the big black nothing with a small nod,

My gut felt like mosquito larvae in an acrid puddle.

I took me a slumber outside The House of Chosen Women,

Where merchants trade slaves for tourmaline beads under the banyan tree.

Took me a slumber beneath the banyan tree,

Yes I,

Took me a slumber beneath the banyan tree.

.

Slept to lullaby laments as black llamas keen with famine;

They’re tethered on Main Street—dry throats beg for October raindrops.

.

When I awoke!,

When I awoke!,

Awoke to a wet-sand tongue rubbing the stubble on my cheek;

When I opened my eyes there standing was a little black dog.

.

Misery ships pulled into port, Ornament Men home from war;

In the furnace they burned textiles in effigy or worship.

.

South, rot and lust choked their brains; in the West they slept with slaughter;